I am visiting two churches. They both have an early service, 7:45 or 8:30. I find them a little less crowded and mostly older folk. Went with dh to a different church last week
Got there late and found it completely packed. We found two seats by the back wall to the left of the entrance so we sat there. A lady pointed us to the upstairs balcony. What a relief, just a few people.
The reason there were no seats was the pastor's object lesson
He had assigned 'reserved' to three full pews. The lesson, he introduced the empty pews as the outstanding saintly people in his church. All I could think of was that the late comers were banished to the balcony. That's okay, we got to skip out before the crowd.
Anna, I remember Saturday vigils where we were the only ones there aside from the pastor and maybe a reader. I miss the prayers, incense and candlelight.